Post your favourite Poems

[Solitary Wanderer]

Post your favourite poetry from any era.

Heres a personal fave from Romantic-era poet John Keats.


John Keats (1795-1821)


To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
       To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
       For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
   Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
       Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
   Steady thy laden head across a brook;
   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
       Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
   Among the river sallows, borne aloft
       Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
       And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

[Ephemerid]

Oh, boy!  I had been thinking about doing a thread like this too!     I luvs me some poetry!  I imagine Sgt. Rock will be here soon too!

I love that quiet wistfuness of that Keats poem, Solitary Wanderer.


POETRY


And it was at that age... poetry arrived
in search of me.  I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river
I don't know how or when,
no, they weren't voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street it called me,
from the branches of the night,
abruptly from all the others,
among raging fires
or returning alone,
there it was, without a face,
and it touched me.

I didn't know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of one who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
the darkness perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the overpowering night, the universe.

And I, tiny being,
drunk with the great starry void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars.
My heart broke loose with the wind.

                               ~ Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)
                                  translated by Alastair Reid

[Ephemerid]

FLIGHT


Our love was not other than this:
it left, came back and brought us
a lowered eyelid in the far distance
a stony smile, lost
in the dawn grass
a strange shell our soul
insistently tried to explain.

Our love was not other than this: it groped
silently among the things around us
to explain why we don't want to die
so passionately.

And if we've held on by the loins, clasped
other necks as tightly as we could,
mingled our breath with the breath
of that person
if we've closed our eyes, it was not other than this:
simply that deep longing to hang on
in our flight.

                        ~ George Seferis
                           translated by Edmund Keeley & Philip Sherrard

[MishaK]

Watermelons
   

Green Buddhas
On the fruit stand.
We eat the smile
And spit out the teeth.

Charles Simic

[Ephemerid]

Not Revelation — 'tis — that waits
But our unfurnished eyes —

                       ~ Emily Dickinson

[Ephemerid]

One of my very very favourites:



We say release, radiance, and roses,
and echo upon everything that's known;
and yet, behind the world our names enclose is
the nameless: our true archetype and home.

The sun seems male, and earth is like a woman,
the field is humble, and the forest proud;
but over everything we say, inhuman,
moves the forever-undetermined god.

We grow up; but the world remains a child.
Star and flower, in silence, watch us go.
And sometimes we appear to be the final
exam they must succeed on.  And they do.

                              ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
                                 translated by Stephen Mitchell

[Sergeant Rock]

I posted James Merrill's "The Ring Cycle" in an opera thread the other day:

http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,113.440.html


A favorite poem by Emily Dickinson:

Satisfaction -- is the Agent
Of Satiety --
Want -- a quiet Commissary
For Infinity.

To possess, is past the instant
We achieve the Joy --
Immortality contented
Were Anomaly.

[Sergeant Rock]

John Berryman, my favorite poet, wrote a magnificent sonnet cycle (117 Petrarchan sonnets, a form difficult to write in English) about an adulterous love affair. I like the stark simplicity of the final poem, and its poignancy as the poet realizes the affair is over. The weather has indeed changed.


All we were going strong last night this time,
the mots were flying & the frozen daiquiris
were downing, supine on the floor lay Lise
listening to Schubert grievous & sublime,
my head was frantic with a following rime:
it was a good evening, an evening to please,
I kissed her in the kitchen--ecstasies--
among so much good we tamped down the crime.

The weather's changing. This morning was cold,
as I made for the grove, without expectation,
some hundred Sonnets in my pocket, old,
to read her if she came. Presently the sun
yellowed the pines & my lady came not
in blue jeans & a sweater. I sat down & wrote.

[Jupiter]

This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
   They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
   And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
   By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
   And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
   It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
   And don't have any kids yourself.

--Philip Larkin

[hornteacher]

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

- Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

[Solitary Wanderer]

Wonderful people!

An interesting cross selection so far of both humorous, thought provoking and, well, poetic prose

Heres one I read at a friends birthday a couple of years ago.

Leisure

William Henry Davies


What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

[bwv 1080]

The Emperor of Ice-Cream
Wallace Stevens

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.


The Death Of A Soldier
Wallace Stevens

Life contracts and death is expected,
As in a season of autumn.
The soldier falls.

He does not become a three-days personage,
Imposing his separation,
Calling for pomp.

Death is absolute and without memorial,
As in a season of autumn,
When the wind stops,

When the wind stops and, over the heavens,
The clouds go, nevertheless,
In their direction.


»

[Haffner]

The Emperor of Ice-Cream
Wallace Stevens

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.


The Death Of A Soldier
Wallace Stevens

Life contracts and death is expected,
As in a season of autumn.
The soldier falls.

He does not become a three-days personage,
Imposing his separation,
Calling for pomp.

Death is absolute and without memorial,
As in a season of autumn,
When the wind stops,

When the wind stops and, over the heavens,
The clouds go, nevertheless,
In their direction.


»

I always thought that one was a little creepy, Steve! Maybe because I first saw it in the Stephen King classic horror novel, "Salem's Lot". But, this poem is about death isn't it?


This one's a bit morbid also to me, but moving too:


Because I could not stop for Death, 
He kindly stopped for me; 
The carriage held but just ourselves 
And Immortality. 
   
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,         
And I had put away 
My labor, and my leisure too, 
For his civility. 
   
We passed the school where children played 
At wrestling in a ring;         
We passed the fields of gazing grain, 
We passed the setting sun. 
   
We paused before a house that seemed 
A swelling of the ground; 
The roof was scarcely visible,         
The cornice but a mound. 
   
Since then 't is centuries; but each 
Feels shorter than the day 
I first surmised the horses' heads 
Were toward eternity.

Emily Dickinson

[Haffner]

For pure imagery:

so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

W. Carlos Williams

[BorisG]

         The Centre of the Universe

                 by Paul Durcan



Pushing my trolley about in the supermarket;
I am the centre of the universe;
Up and down the aisles of beans and juices,
I am the centre of the universe;
It does not matter that I live alone;
It does not matter that I am a jilted lover;
It does not matter that I am a misfit in my job;
I am the centre of the universe.

But I'm always here, if you want me -
For I am the centre of the universe.

I enjoy being the centre of the universe.
It is not easy being the centre of the universe
But I enjoy it.
I take pleasure in,
I delight in,
Being the centre of the universe.
At six o'clock a.m. this morning I had a phone call;
It was from a friend, a man in Los Angeles;
"Paul, I don't know what time it is in Dublin
But I simply had to call you:
I cannot stand LA so I thought I'd call you."
I calmed him down as best I could.

But I'm always here, if you want me -
For I am the centre of the universe.

I had barely put the phone down when it rang again,
This time from a friend in Sao Paulo in Brazil:
"Paul - do you know what is the population of Sao Paulo?
I will tell you: it is twelve million skulls.
Twelve million pairs of feet in one footbath.
Twelve million pairs of eyes in one fishbowl.
It is unspeakable, I tell you, unspeakable."
I calmed him down.

But I'm always here, if you want me -
For I am the centre of the universe.

But then when the phone rang a third time and it was not yet 6.30 a.m.,
The petals of my own hysteria began to wake up and unfurl.
This time it was a woman I know in New York City:
"Paul - Ney York City is a Cage",
And she began to cry a little over the phone,
To sob over the phone,
And from five thousand miles away I mopped up her tears.
I dabbed each tear from her cheek
With just a word or two or three from my calm voice.

I'm always here, if you want me -
For I am the centre of the universe.

But now tonight it is myself;
Sitting at my aluminium double-glazed window in Dublin city;
Crying just a little bit into my black tee shirt.
If only there was just one human being out there
With whom I could make a home? Share a home?
Just one creature out there in the night-
Is there not just one creature out there in the night?
In Helsinki, perhaps? Or in Reykjavik?
Or in Chapelizod? or in Malahide?
So you see, I have to calm myself down also
If I am to remain the centre of the universe;
It's by no means an exclusively self-centred automatic thing
Being the centre of the universe.

I'm always here, if you want me -
For I am the centre of the universe.

[bwv 1080]

I always thought that one was a little creepy, Steve! Maybe because I first saw it in the Stephen King classic horror novel, "Salem's Lot". But, this poem is about death isn't it?

It was Emperor of Ice Cream in Salem's Lot?  Cool did not know that

[Ephemerid]

Some really wonderful poems here!   





I would like
                    to be born
                                     in every country,
have a passport
                         for them all
to throw
              all foreign offices
                                           into panic,
be every fish
                     in every ocean
and every dog
                       in the streets of the world.
I don't want to bow down
                                          before any idols
or play at being
                         an Orthodox church hippie,
but I would like to plunge
                                          deep into Lake Baikal
and surface snorting
                                 somewhere,
                                                    why not in the Mississippi?
In my damned beloved universe
                                                    I would like
to be a lonely weed,
                                 but not a delicate Narcissus
kissing his own mug
                                 in the mirror.
I would like to be
                             Any of God's creatures
Right down to the last mangy hyena—
But never a tyrant
                              Or even the cat of a tyrant.
I would like to be
                             reincarnated as a man
                                                                 in any circumstance:
a victim of Paraguayan prison tortures,
a homeless child in the slums of Hong Kong,
a living skeleton in Bangladesh,
a holy beggar in Tibet,
a black in Cape Town,
but never
                in the image of Rambo.
The only people whom I hate
                                                are the hypocrites—
pickled hyenas
                        in heavy syrup.
I would like to lie
              under the knives of all the surgeons in the world,
be hunchbacked, blind,
                              suffer all kinds of diseases,
                                                                   wounds and scars,
be a victim of war,
                               or a sweeper of cigarette butts,
just so a filthy microbe of superiority
                                                           doesn't creep inside.
I would not like to be in the elite,
nor, of course,
                        in the cowardly herd,
nor be a guard dog of that herd,
nor a shepherd,
                         sheltered by that herd.
And I would like happiness,
                                    but not at the expense of the unhappy,
and I would like freedom,
                                   but not at the expense of the unfree.
I would like to love
                                all the women in the world,
and I would like to be a woman, too—
                                                               just once...
Men have been diminished
                                            by Mother Nature.
Suppose she'd given motherhood
                                                      to men?
If an innocent child
                               stirred
                                          below his heart,
man would probably
                                 not be so cruel.
I would like to be man's daily bread—
say,
        a cup of rice
                             for a Vietnamese woman in mourning,
cheap wine
                   in a Neapolitan workers' trattoria,
or a tiny tube of cheese
                                      in orbit round the moon.
Let them eat me,
                            let them drink me,
only let my death
                            be of some use.
I would like to belong to all times,
                                                        shock all history so much
that it would be amazed
                                       what a smart aleck I was.
I would like to bring Nefertiti
                                                to Pushkin in a troika.
I would like to increase
                                      the space of a moment
                                                                           a hundredfold,
so that in the same moment
                    I could drink vodka with fishermen in Siberia
and sit together with Homer,
                                              Dante,
                                                         Shakespeare,
                                                                              and Tolstoy,
drinking anything,
                              except, of course,
                                                          Coca-Cola,
—dance to the tom-toms in the Congo,
—strike at Renault,
—chase a ball with Brazilian boys
                                                       at Copacabana Beach.
I would like to know every language,
                                         the secret waters under the earth,
and do all kinds of work at once.
                                                     I would make sure
that one Yevtushenko was merely a poet,
                                           the second—an underground fighter
                                                                                      somewhere,
I couldn't say where
                             for security reasons,
the third—a student at Berkley,
                                the fourth—a jolly Georgian drinker,
and the fifth—
                        maybe a teacher of Eskimo children in Alaska,
the sixth—
                  a young president,
                                     somewhere, say even in Sierra Leone,
the seventh—
                       would still be shaking a rattle in his stroller,
and the tenth...
                         the hundredth...
                                                    the millionth...
For me it's not enough to be myself,
                                                           let me be everyone!
Every creature
                        usually has a double,
but God was stingy
                               with the carbon paper,
and in his Paradise Publishing Company
                                                                 made a unique copy of me.
But I shall muddle up
                                   all God's cards—
                                                            I shall confound God!
I shall be in a thousand copies to the end of my days,
so that the earth buzzes with me,
                                                     and computers go berserk
in the world census of me.
I would like to fight on all your barricades,
                                                                     humanity,
dying each night
                           an exhausted moon,
and being resurrected each morning
                                                          like a newborn sun,
with an immortal soft spot
                                           on my skull.
And when I die,
                          a smart-aleck Siberian François Villon,
do not lay me in the earth
                                          of France
                                                          or Italy,
but in our Russian, Siberian earth,
                                                       on a still-green hill,
where I first felt
                           that I was
                                           everyone.

               ~ Yevgeny Yevtushenko
                  translated by the author

[Ephemerid]

FOR THE ANNIVERSARY OF MY DEATH


Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave out to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveler
Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what

                            ~ W.S. Merwin



I love how this poem projects itself out in the distant future and space (which reminds me of that dizzying perspective in Dickinson's original version of "Safe in their alabaster chambers") but then whips the reader back into "here" in the present moment-- the contrast of an infinite future and infinite space contrasted with the finite present moment has the startling effect of a zen koan!

[Symphonien]

A few poems by Swiss poet Eugen Gomringer:

Silencio



Ping-Pong



Wind



o

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Wallace Stevens (his creepiest poem, and one of my favourites):


Madame la Fleurie
   

Weight him down, O side-stars, with the great weightings of the end.
Seal him there. He looked in a glass of the earth and thought he lived in it.
Now, he brings all that he saw into the earth, to the waiting parent.
His crisp knowledge is devoured by her, beneath a dew.


Weight him, weight, weight him with the sleepiness of the moon.
It was only a glass because he looked in it. It was nothing he could be told.
It was a language he spoke, because he must, yet did not know.
It was a page he had found in the handbook of heartbreak.


The black fugatos are strumming the blackness of black...
The thick strings stutter the finial gutturals.
He does not lie there remembering the blue-jay, say the jay.
His grief is that his mother should feed on him, himself and what he saw,
In that distant chamber, a bearded queen, wicked in her dead light.